Previews

Free Realms

Sony Online aims for the teens and tweens market with a playful new take on free MMO gaming.

Spiffy:

Colorful, stylized graphics; simple to pick up and play; appeals to non-gamers.

Iffy:

Definitely not designed for your serious, hardcore gamer crowd.

The numbers for World of Warcraft may be huge, but there's more to massively multiplayer gaming than just titles with monthly subscription fees. Some of the biggest successes in the space, especially overseas, have been free-to-play games. Free to download and supported by either advertising or item sales or a combination of both, these games are easy to get into and players can choose how much they want to spend. They're a popular choice with younger gamers who don't necessarily have a credit card or deep pockets.

The drawback to most of these games to date has been the production quality -- websites are ugly or spammed with blinking ads (no offense to our ad unit at the right, which is probably blinking), and the games are often poorly translated from Korean. That's where Sony Online comes in. The company's newest title in development, Free Realms, targets younger and casual players with a very clean, very polished, very elegant game that just might take off.

Players enter Free Realms via the website, which is simple and well-organized. Your initial game experience is web-based: you can create and name your character before you even have to download anything. The game client streams content in, which keeps the initial download small and allows people to get right into the action.

Once inside the game, players will find themselves in an exaggerated fantasy world where anything goes. The Shrek-like sense of humor is complimented by the whimsical look of the graphics. Cartoony misshapen trees adorn the spaces between over-inflated, gingerbread-like houses. It's like you're stepping onto the set of a claymation holiday special. The stylized art hides the fact that the engine is very simple; Free Realms should run great even on low-end machines.